A Mom's Eye View (and exciting news!!)

I am slightly addicted to the Celebrity Baby Blog. I first began reading there to find out what Elizabeth Hasselbeck would name her first child, but that is another story. If it weren’t for that strange inquest, my ear would never have been tuned to the name Sarah Palin. The pregnancy and birth of her 5th child, Trig, were both reported there and my original thoughts about Mrs. Palin are completely different now than they were then.

At the time I thought, “Wow, what an inspiring woman! To conceive another child with so many other responsibilities, and then return to them so completely, even with her son’s disability.” I didn’t know anything about Sarah Palin except what I read at the CBB and her general appearance. Her decisions then seemed to be those of a modern, working mom making good choices for her family.

Then John McCain nominated her for VP, and I realized she was a Republican. Almost immediately afterwards, it was speculated that her baby was really her daughter’s. That’s a lot of drama already, Mama! Next, was the announcement that her 17 year old daughter is pregnant. Up until this point, although she would have never had my vote, she still had my benefit of the doubt. Being a mother is challenging, and you can’t be with your children all the time.

Another confession of sorts is that I also frequent Perez Hilton’s website, where I had easy access to numerous pictures of Bristol Palin holding varying bottles of liquor with her scantily clad friends. The rumors, all over the internet, of Track Palin vandalizing school buses were pretty disgusting as well. Levi Johnston’s MySpace page being made public was the icing on my mommified-cake. My faith in her as a mother was all but lost at that point. Sarah Palin’s views on sexual education, evolution, and religion as a whole (link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/29/sarah-palin-says-she-open_n_122519.html) didn’t improve my evaluation.

If I’m trying to look at Sarah Palin as just a mother, these things are more than enough for me to form a strong impression of her choices. How do the church going kids of an American governor have the time and space to participate in underage drinking, vandalize school property, and get pregnant? Where was Sarah Palin on the weekends when all of this was happening? The lack of communication and understanding required for a family to bring about that much drama is highly astounding in my book. Dedication to your job should never outweigh dedication to raising competent adults that can serve our country, in what ever manner, with kindness and wisdom.

I do feel badly that her children have been forced into the spotlight as they have, although the oldest two didn’t make it very difficult. I also understand, from my own teen years, that your parents cannot control you, or even know you completely the way they do when you’re small. But at the same time, I feel a mother who represents America has a responsibility to have done a better job. You can preach abstinence and promise rings all you’d like, but when your child is old enough to have sex, there needs to be something more. Maybe Mrs. Palin could talk with Bristol about the fact that Track was actually conceived before she was married? You can strive to raise strong boys, but when they act out violently, something has gone wrong. The sacrifices of so many other wars (link: http://www.asiaing.com/poems-by-wilfred-owen.html ) mean nothing when you leave to serve our country because you destroyed school property.

I would never doubt that Sarah Palin loves her children more than her own life. For the sake of her younger children I hope that she has done and continues to do the best she can. For this mom, however, it’s not good enough.



Exciting News! This piece has been posted over at Crabbygolightly.com! I'm writing over there whenever they need/want me to! I'm really looking forward to having some of my stuff up over there soon! Here's the link: http://www.crabbygolightly.com/sarahpalin.html